Canna Law

Last week I had the pleasure of attending the International Trademark Association’s (INTA) Annual Meeting in Seattle, where trademark practitioners from around the world convened to geek out on all things brand-related. One of the prevalent topics of conversation was trademark licensing. While we’ve discussed at length some of the […]

The goal of your ballot initiative is to get to a vote. Oregon successfully legalized the use, sale, processing, and production of recreational marijuana in 2014 through the initiative process. The initiative process is a method of direct democracy that allows people to propose laws outside of the normal legislative process. […]

This Thursday, June 7th, our own Vince Sliwoski will co-chair an all-day continuing legal education (CLE) event in Portland called The Business of Marijuana in Oregon, along with Jesse Sweet, a lawyer and senior policy analyst at the Oregon Liquor Control Commission (OLCC). The roster of speakers lined up for this […]

Tomorrow, June 5th, Californians will go to the polls and vote on a number of state and local races, along with tax measures and other proposed laws. Cannabis will play a large role in many of them. In the gubernatorial primary race the two favorites, Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom and […]

Investors are savvy. Make sure you know your terms! Equity financing has only recently become a viable option for companies in the cannabis industry. As a result, many industry entrepreneurs are unfamiliar with equity financing terms. Also, many entrepreneurs (in many industries) don’t dig deeply into terms they don’t understand, […]

Treat employees the same, regardless of age. We have recently been exploring employment laws that only kick in once your cannabis company employs a certain number of employees. In the first part of this series, we discussed California’s sexual harassment policy requirements and last week we discussed federal and state […]

Mediation and arbitration are the two major “alternative dispute resolution” (ADR) techniques used in business disputes. We’ve discussed arbitration in cannabis cases in several previous blog posts, here, here, here, here, and here. Although arbitration gets more attention these days than mediation (see the Supreme Court’s recent arbitration decision), mediation is […]